In January 2011, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin promised to allocate 115 billion rubles from the federal budget for national space projects during that year. A total of about 50 spacecraft would be delivered to orbit (during 2011), Putin said at the meeting of a committee on the 50th anniversary of Gagarin's mission. (451) In the meantime, the head of Roskosmos, Anatoly Perminov, promised 48 space launches during 2011. He also promised agreements on space cooperation with Israel, Vietnam, Nigeria, Belarus, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. On the military side, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced the purchase during 2011 of 36 strategic ballistic missiles (apparently including Bulava and Topol-M ICBMs), 20 aircraft-carried cruise missiles and the a total of 21 air-defense missile systems S-300V4, Buk-M2 and Tor-M. (462)

The Year of Space, as the Russian government hailed the coming of 2011, ended up to be the most disastrous 12 months for the Russian space industry in the post-Soviet era.
A total of four missions which left their launch pads during 2011 either never made it into space (Progress M-12M, Meridian No. 5) or ended up in wrong orbits (Geo-IK-2, Ekspress-AM4). To top it off, Russia's loudly advertised return to planetary exploration after a 15-year hiatus ended in a high-profile fiasco, when the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft got stranded in low Earth orbit almost immediately after its launch on November 9. However all these failures coincided with an extremely hectic launch rate, almost matching that of two other leading space nations -- US and China -- combined! Despite setbacks, Russia has succeeded in bolstering or reviving space capabilities that the nation had lacked for many years, including the launch of a major astrophysics observatory -- Spektr-R; the return to geostationary orbit with a weather satellite Elektro-L; the re-introduction of a data-relay network with Luch-5A and the beginning of flight testing of an upgraded navigation satellite -- GLONASS-K. Last but not least, the Soyuz rocket received a brand-new launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana, which increased the capabilities of the veteran launch vehicle family in delivering commercial payloads into space.

*Failed to depart to Mars after a successful delivery into the Earth orbit by a launch vehicle;

**Re-assigned mission

Delayed from first quarter 2011: Ariane-5 or Soyuz to launch the Intelsat New Dawn satellite from Kourou into a geostationary orbit for New Dawn Satellite Company Ltd. ("New Dawn"), a joint venture between Intelsat and a South African investor group led by Convergence Partners. The contract for the mission was announced on April 14, 2009, with the launch planned for the end of 2010. By June 2010, the mission slipped to the first quarter of 2011. It was an addition to the agreement signed by Intelsat and Arianespace in December 2008. New Dawn will provide critical communications infrastructure to Africa supporting wireless backhaul, broadband, direct-to-home and video applications. The satellite will weigh about 3,000 kg at launch, and has a design life exceeding 15 ye ars. Built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, Intelsat New Dawn will be fitted with 28 C-band and 24 Ku-band 36 MHz transponder units. It will be positioned at 33 degrees East and will deliver new capacity to Africa for voice, wireless backhaul, Internet and media applications. The satellite was launched on Ariane-5, its C-band antenna did not deploy and Intelsat took a full ownership of the spacecraft.

A fully assembled Soyuz rocket slated to make the first flight from a brand-new launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana, undergoes final preparation at the center's integration building. Credit: Arianespace